Tom Cruise left an airplane flying with no pilot in an insane stunt for his new movie

"American Made."
Universal
Since his last two "Mission: Impossible" movies, in which he climbed the tallest building in the world and hung from the side of a plane as it took off, it's almost become a requirement that Tom Cruise dazzle us with an impossible-looking stunt in all his movies going forward.

Following the premiere earlier this week of the trailer for "American Made," in which Cruise plays real-life drug/gun runner Barry Seal, director Doug Liman told Yahoo UK that not only did Cruise do some of the flying in the movie, but at times he also left the cockpit and no one flying the plane.

"It can be pretty hair-raising — flying extremely fast, small airplanes, low to the ground, is a dangerous environment to be in just on its own," Liman said. "Then, in the story, he's throwing bales of cocaine out of the airplane, loading them up with guns, so every once in a while in this scene he's got to climb out of the cockpit and go to the back of the airplane to dump the cocaine out.

"I'm flying alongside him in a helicopter filming, and that made a big impression on me — there's nobody in the cockpit of the plane! Tom has gone to the back of the aircraft, and he's alone in that airplane. It's one thing to have Tom Cruise alone in the airplane flying it — that's already outrageous — now he's alone and he's not even in the cockpit so he's gone beyond. It was already a stunt before he left the cockpit, it was already a serious stunt."

Sounds like just another day on the set with Tom Cruise.

Before "American Made" opens on September 29, you can see Cruise in "The Mummy," which also has the star in a thrilling airplane scene. He spent time in a zero-gravity plane for that one.